My Spacelab in Space

Archive for March, 2013

Messier Marathon Part 5 (On to Sunrise)

By this point, only one other person was left and he was packing up. Soon, I was all alone, waiting for the last few objects to rise.

M6 is an open cluster in Scorpius:

M6

And M7 is another open cluster next to it. This was shot through trees.

M7

M16, the Eagle Nebula follows. I didn’t get much of the nebula here, but I did get the cluster:

M16

Then M17, the Swan Nebula:

M17

And M18, an open cluster nearby:

M18

M24 is a gigantic star cloud in Sagittarius. It’s not much to look at here, but it’s mainly just clumps of the Milky Way:

M24

Then M25:

M25

And M23:

M23

The next three objects are close-by. M8, the Lagoon Nebula, M20, the Trifid Nebula and M21, an open cluster. The latter two are obvious. I barely caught part of M8 in this picture (lower right).

M82021

Then M28:

M28

M22, an amazing globular cluster:

M22

M69

M69

and M70:

M70

At this point the noise is getting very bad. M54 is next:

M54

M55 should be next, but I was unable to capture this due to it being very low. M75 was the next one I got:

M75

Then we hit the last two “easy-to-find” objects of the night. M15:

M15

and M2:

M2

Then comes M72, a glob in Aquarius. This is very hard to see visually. It’s right in the middle.

M72

The last one I got was M73, an asterism of four stars in Aquarius (right in the middle).

M73

And that was that. M30 is not really possible from this latitude, and especially not facing into the Baltimore skyglow.

I left around 6:30 and got to see a gorgeous thumbnail moonrise (no pics, sorry). As exhausting as this was, I was very pleased with the experience.


Messier Marathon Part 4 (Globular clusters and open clusters to sunrise)

First, while waiting for these objects to rise, I snapped the following shot of Saturn:

Saturn 1

By this point of the evening, most of the people had packed it up. Only four of us remained by about 3 AM. At this point, we start hitting the globular clusters. First is M5:

M5

I got the shot of M13 with my autoguider:

M13 Zoom

Then M92, another bright glob in Hercules:

M92

M107 in Ophiuchus:

M107

M12 in Ophiuchus:

M12

M10 in Ophiuchus:

M10

And M14 in Ophiuchus:

M14

A quick break from the globs to get M57, the Ring Nebula:

M57

And back to the globs with M56 in Lyra:

M56

M9 in Ophiuchus:

M9

M4 in Scorpius:

M4

M80 in Scorpius:

M80

Next two open clusters in Cygnus. M29, called the Stubby Dipper:

M29

And M39:

M39

M71 is another glob in Sagitta:

M71

Then M27, the Dumbbell Nebula:

M27

M19 in Ophiuchus:

M19

And M62 in Ophiuchus:

M62

The quality of these shots gets significantly worse as we get closer to the horizon and sunrise. I got M11, the Wild Duck Cluster:

M11

And M26, and open cluster in Scutum:

M26

Next is the early morning objects.


Messier Marathon Part 3 (Galaxies, Galaxies, Galaxies)

Most of the next large set of objects are galaxies.

First we get M95 (top), M96 (center) and M105 (bottom left), a nice triplet in Leo. NGC 3371 is the bright companion to M105. A dimmer companion, NGC 3389, is also visible:

M9596105

The more famous Leo Triplet comes next. This consist of M65  (top), M66 (bottom) and NGC 3628 (left):

M6566

Next is M81 (right) and M82 (left) in Ursa Major:

M8182

Then M97, the Owl Nebula and M108, right next to a star in the Big Dipper’s bowl:

M97108

M109 comes next, close to another star in the bowl of the dipper:

M109

The oddest object of the entire catalog is next. M40 is simply a double star. It’s perplexing why Messier would’ve included this:

M40

M106 follows, another spiral galaxy in Ursa Major:

M106

M94 comes next, a spiral galaxy with very tightly wound arms:

M94

M63, the Sunflower galaxy follows:

M63

M51, the Whirpool Galaxy follows. I took this photo later when there wasn’t much else to do:

M51-Zoom

Then M101:

M101

And M102, a very tiny galaxy. There’s also an extremely thin galaxy called the Splinter just below it:

M102

Then M53, a globular cluster in Coma Berenices:

M53

And M64, the Black Eye Galaxy:

M64

Next we get M3, a globular cluster:

M3

Next we start looking at the Virgo cluster. This area of the sky has thousands of galaxies. We start with M98 (the thin galaxy near the top), M99 (the spiral down and to the right), M100 (another spiral down and to the left) and M85 (faint and tiny in the bottom left).

M989910085

Next is M84 and M86, in Markarian’s chain:

M8486

Next, we have M87, a very large galaxy (in raw size, not in the sky):

M87

Then we have M88 through M91.  M89 is center left, M90, center top, M91, center right, M88, bottom right:

M88899091

Then M58 (near the top), M59 and M60 (near the bottom):

M585960

M49 is next:

M49

And M61 is the last of the Virgo cluster:

M61

We then look at M104, the Sombrero Galaxy in Corvus:

M104

There is a bit of a wait at this point, because you must wait for Hydra to rise. M68 is a globular cluster:

M68

The last galaxy of the night is M83, the Southern Whirlpool:

M83

At this point, you have quite a while to twiddle your thumbs. Following that, you move on to globular clusters and open clusters, which basically round out the marathon.


Messier Marathon Part 2 (Tons of Open Clusters and a Few Nebulae)

Following the early objects comes a very long string of open clusters with a few popular nebulae mixed in.

The first two are in Cassiopeia. M103 is a nice open cluster located next to one of the bright stars in Cassiopeia. Quite colorful. The scale is quite large here, and you can follow the line from the bright star to M103 to reach NGC 663, another open cluster.

M103

M52 is another nice cluster, pretty dense. Just down and left of the cluster is the Bubble nebula.

M52

Next is the first nebula of the evening, M76, the Little Dumbell (or the Corkscrew). It’s the tiny object just below the bright star in the center:

M76

M34 follows, an open cluster in Perseus:

M34

M45, the Pleiades follows, one of the most widely known Messier objects. Visible here is some of the reflection nebula that overlays this cluster:

M45

M79 is next, the first globular cluster of the evening in Lepus:

M79

Then you get to M42 and M43. M42, the Orion Nebula, is another very widely recognized object. I framed this shot to get the Flame Nebula and the Horsehead nebula, just off the belt of Orion. Also visible are the Running Man Nebula and a satellite trail. M42 is the bright part of the nebula and M43 is the small nebula on top.

M4243

M78 comes next. This is a reflection nebula near Orion’s midsection. I didn’t plan this, but I caught the Flame and Horsehead here, as well as Barnard’s loop (the very long red nebula at the bottom):

Picture saved with settings embedded.

Next is the M1, the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant that erupted in the 11th century:

M1

M35 is an open cluster in Gemini. Next to it is a smaller open cluster:

M35

M37 is a very dense open cluster in Auriga:

M37

M36 and M38 are two nearby clusters in Auriga. Also visible here (bottom left) is the Flaming Star nebula:

M3638

Next in M41. This was pretty low when I took it:

M41

Then comes M93 in Puppis:

M93

M46 and M47 are two open clusters in Canis Major. M46 is quite dense and has a planetary nebula in it:

Picture saved with settings embedded.

Then M50, the Heart-Shaped Open Cluster:

M50

Next is M48, and open cluster in Monoceros:

M48

Next is the M44, the Beehive Cluster, in Cancer:

M44

And finally, M67, also in Cancer:

M67

That’s it for this portion of the marathon. We’ll hit some more open clusters later, but next comes a very long string of galaxies.


Messier Marathon Part 1 (Introduction and Early Objects)

The Messier Marathon is an event that happens around new moon in March. Charles Messier was a French astronomer several hundred years ago. He was looking for comets, but kept finding things that he thought were comets. He didn’t know what some of them were (many turned out to be other galaxies), but he started cataloging them so he didn’t get fooled by the same object more than once. This list became was is known as the Messier Objects, designated M1 through M110. As it turns out, in March, if you go to a dark enough site and live in the right set of latitudes, you can see all 110 in a single night. The night starts with M77, visible for only a little while after sunset and progresses to M30, visible only a little while before sunset.

This past Saturday night, I participated in my fifth Messier Marathon. The second one I did was 10 years ago, at the Baker Observatory near Springfield, MO. The first one was actually preparation for that, a few nights earlier. I tried a “full moon” marathon a few years later just to see if it could be done. I had a 12.5″ Dobsonian and I recall getting quite a few, but giving up early in the night because galaxies were extremely hard to find. My most successful marathon was the next year, when I saw 109 objects, missing only M30.

This year was a close second, in a slightly different way. I decided to do a photographic marathon, trying to image all of the objects. I failed to capture M55 and M30, the former due to trees and the latter due to it’s proximity to the sun. All shots were with a Canon T2i. Early in the evening, I was doing most of my shots with an Astronomik Light Pollution Filter. I popped it out later in the night just to see the difference. As for the lenses, I used a Canon 200mm f2.8 early in the night, my Celestron Edge HD for M13 and M52, and my Astrotech refractor for the later objects. I’ve processed these as best as I could, but I didn’t go to any great efforts with most of them. The 200mm lens does have some chromatic aberration, but I’ve tried to fix that with Photoshop.

This event was a members-only star party, hosted by the Howard Astro League, at Alpha Ridge Community Park in Marriotsville, Maryland.

I captured the following shot of the sunset before we were able to see any Messier objects. (Click any image for a higher-res shot).

Sunset

The “early objects” are one of the major challenges of the evening, however every marathon I’ve done, I’ve been able to see them all. The first three are M77, M74 and M33. M77 is a barred spiral galaxy with a bright core, and M74 and M33 are spiral galaxies with fairly low surface brightness. It can be quite a challenge to see them in evening twilight.

Here’s M77 (the tiny dot just below the dimmest star in the diagonal line of four at the top):

M77

Here’s M74. It’s centered here and quite difficult to make out:

M74

Here’s M33, similarly dim:

M33

The last of the early objects are M31 and its two satellite galaxies, M32 and M110. M31 is very easy to find due to its bright core. M32 is also easy because it’s a tiny elliptical galaxy. M110 is tougher, because it has low surface bright. This picture shows all three.

M3132110

Up next, a slew of open clusters with a few nebulae thrown in there.